Wilsall Rodeo

Wilsall, Montana, is a ranch community of roughly 200 people. It sits at 5,000 feet in the Shields River Valley, between the Bridger and Crazy Mountains. For two nights each June its rodeo arena runs bareback riding, ranch bronc riding and bull riding, with the Crazy Mountains standing behind the chutes. The 2026 edition, which its organizers billed as the 72nd, ran June 20 and 21 on the Northern Rodeo Association schedule. The town is on US Highway 89, about 45 minutes from Bozeman. A parade goes with the rodeo. Pamela Bussi, writing in 2011, counted about 150 members on the Wilsall Rodeo Committee and noted a barbecue. She also wrote that all of the shows are amateur and that many riders have gone on to the professional circuit. A blogger at the 2013 rodeo reported that it opened with a performance by “the slightly math-challenged Ringling 5,” whose song was “If Jesus Had Been a Norwegian.”

Hot dogs behind the grandstands

The food comes from the Women of Wilsall. In a Bozeman Daily Chronicle story from the group’s 32nd year, Cheryl Robinson, then 53, was flipping hot dogs and Polish sausage behind the grandstands.

“Do you want one that’s black, or not?” she asked a young customer.

“Black, I guess,” he replied.

“Good. Because that’s all we’ve got.”

Robinson was a founding member. The group began in 1976 with five members, and the rodeo stand, selling ‘dogs and hot chocolate, was its biggest fundraiser of the year. Many on the crew had worked it for 20 years. Its money had gone to computers for the school, student ski trips and school uniforms. The women had also organized Christmas strolls and sponsored the town parade. “If they want something done in Wilsall, they call the Women of Wilsall,” Robinson said. Judy Jenkins, another founder, called herself a “newcomer.” “I came here 35 years ago,” she said.

Around the arena that day, Arnold Hoyem, 84, sat in his green pickup. He was secretary treasurer of the rodeo and had overseen it for 35 or 40 years, he said. Asthma had put him on an oxygen tank, and sore knees kept him in the truck and off the railing. He told of two cowboys who took a week to get from the Augusta Rodeo to their ranch in Melville, because they spent their winnings at every bar in between. “It’s the big event of the year,” he said. Robinson allowed that the place had changed: “It’s not the same little ranching community.” Then she added, “Women of Wilsall hasn’t (changed.) Wilsall has.”

Will, Sally, and the railroad

The sources disagree on the town’s name. A history printed in the 1968 Wilsall Rodeo program says Wilsall was named for Will Jordan of the Jordan-Robertson Company and his wife, Sally. The Wilsall Water District says Mr. Jordan named it for his son and daughter, William and Sally. Bussi dates the founding to 1887, when the Jordan-Robertson owners donated the plot where the town now sits. The 1968 program says the town started one mile north of the present site and moved when Jordan and Robertson gave the Northern Pacific its right of way.

The train reached Wilsall in December 1909, according to the program. Homesteaders followed, and by 1916 nearly every quarter section was occupied. In its heyday the town had two banks, three elevators, a flour mill, a Chinese restaurant, two hospitals, a newspaper and a paid baseball team. Bussi puts the 1916 population near 1,300 and writes that the depression of 1920 hit Wilsall hard. The banks closed and people left.

Poles from the mountains

In 1953, Bussi writes, “a few locals with a rodeo bug” talked of putting on a rodeo, and about 30 people came to a town meeting. Cliff Owen was one of them. “We all played at rodeos a little bit and we had a meeting and decided we should build our own,” he told the Chronicle years later. Shares of stock were sold to pay for chutes and an arena. Ranchers went into the mountains to cut poles, and Owen brought timber down for the first livestock pens.

Bussi gives May 1954 for the completion of the chutes and arena, and June 29, 1954, for the first rodeo. The 1968 program and a Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame biography both give 1953 as the beginning. At that first rodeo Owen and Bill D’Ewart won $800 in team roping. “That’s the most we ever got,” Owen said, laughing, and added that it was all downhill for 15 years afterward. In 1958 the rodeo grew to two days, because many locals wanted to try riding some type of animal.

One of the pole cutters was Robert “Bob” Shiplet of Ringling, a Navy veteran of the battleship USS South Dakota. His rodeo career began in the summer of 1946. He danced for the crowd as he came off his rough stock, so the circuit knew him as Dancing Bob. He later flew his own Cessna to rodeos. According to his Hall of Fame biography, he worked on the Wilsall grounds with his hired men and ranch friends for several years. He was proud to have helped build the rodeo and then ride in it. He liked small rodeos such as Wilsall because he could chat with his ranch friends there.

The poles broke, and the ranchers fixed them every year. After Shiplet moved to a ranch at Clyde Park in 1956, he supplied roping stock and panels for corrals and helped at the bucking chutes. In those days all of that was donated. The rodeo is still held on the grounds those ranchers built. In the 1990s, his biography says, Shiplet “got teary eyed” as long-needed improvements to them took shape. He died at his ranch in 2001.

Pearl at the gate

The Chronicle found Pearl D’Ewart and Cliff Owen at the rodeo 53 years after it began. They were quite possibly the last of the original group. Owen was 85 and sat in a lawn chair outside the metal arena corral. He had been grand marshal of the parade. D’Ewart had just turned 91. Her husband, Bill, had ridden in the first rodeo, and for nearly two decades she counted the money at the gates. At 91 she still worked behind the scenes, selling food or raffle tickets for local charities.

“We’re a small community and everybody that can work, works,” she said. “I still have never seen the rodeo.”

Crowds of more than 1,000 now came over the two days. “I think yesterday was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen,” Owen said. D’Ewart said, “It used to be you could open the phone book and know everyone in there, now there’s hardly a familiar name.” A few minutes into their talk she got up to go back to work and gave Owen a pat on the hand.

“Stay out of the bar now,” he said.

“I will for a little bit,” she answered.